Introduction: The death of the author -- Moliere's writers -- The early plays and the pirates who loved them -- Comedic authorship and its discontents -- "Je veux qu'on me distingue" -- The school for publishers -- Collaboration's pyrrhic triumph -- Afterword: The death of the actor
Summary
This book is the first full-length study to examine Molière's evolving (and at times contradictory) authorial strategies, as evidenced both by his portrayal of authors and publication within the plays and by his own interactions with the seventeenth-century Parisian publishing industry. Historians of the book have described the time period that coincides with Molière's theatrical activity as centrally important to the development of authors' rights and to the professionalization of the literary field. A seventeenth-century author, however, was not so much born as negotiated through often acrim
